


games with ghosts

by saltandlimes



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: A little bit of blood and injury described, At least for Thorki, First Kiss, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Sharing a Bed, happily ever after ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 17:54:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14454645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltandlimes/pseuds/saltandlimes
Summary: After the battle is over, Thor and his friends go to the palace in Wakanda to rest and regain their strength.For Thor, sleep comes slowly and fitfully, at least until it is interrupted by something he does not expect.Happily ever after (for Thorki) AND Spoilers for Infinity War!





	games with ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> +HI LOTS OF SPOILERS FOR IW HERE! (Ish? I mean not actually super explicitly)
> 
> +The obligatory, highly canon fix-it fic

Thor kneels in the forest, his head down, his hands on his ax. The power in it calls to him, but there is no comfort in that power now. Behind him, he hears Steve screaming, and the crash of wood splintering as he slams his fist into the trees around them. It’s a dull sound in his ears, hardly making its way though the fog that seems to have filled him up. 

“Steve!” Bruce calls out, and that’s muted as well, but it’s desperate enough that Thor cranes his head around, and finds the shorter man hanging off of one of Steve’s arms. Steve’s fist is a bloody mess, his knuckles split open almost to the bone. His other hand has splinters as long as nails dangling from the palm, and as Thor watches, Steve rakes it down the tree next to him, driving the splinters deeper. 

“Steve, stop,” Bruce yells. 

Steve growls, shaking his arm back and forth as though trying to throw off a dog. Bruce hangs on, his face set, his feet scrabbling on the ground. As Thor watches, Steve gives a particularly vicious shake, and Bruce finally flies off. He slams into a boulder across the clearing, slumping to the ground, groaning. 

Thor presses the head of his ax into the ground, using the haft to struggle to his feet. His legs shake beneath him, but he manages to steady himself. He staggers towards Steve. 

“Captain,” he groans. “Captain, stop. This is not the way. This is… there…” He does not know how to go on.

“Let go, Thor,” Steve hisses. He bears his teeth at Thor, trying to fling him away just as he did to Bruce. 

“No,” Thor snaps, wrapping his arms around Steve tightly. “Not today. I swear to you, this does not end this day.”

Steve struggles for a moment longer, but then there is a whoosh of air from his lungs and he sags in Thor’s arms, collapsing like a deflated balloon. 

“How can you know that?” He asks, his hands coming up to rest on Thor’s shoulders, smearing blood across the side of Thor’s neck. “Thanos took so many of them. How can you know it doesn’t all end here?”

“Because I am still alive,” Thor sighs the words into the still air between them. “And because it was prophesied to me,” he starts to continue. He can’t finish, though, because Natasha interrupts. 

“That’s lovely Thor, but I’m going to stick with, I’m still alive, and the world is just getting screwed a new way this time.” She comes over to them, one cheek smeared with dirt and the her hair all in disarray. “Everyone dies sometime. We’re not dead now, so we might as well take out as many fuckers as we can before we’re in our graves too.”

“Why?” Steve rounds on her, clenching his bleeding fists at his sides. “Why should we care a damn about them. Who are we saving the world for now, Natasha?”

“No one?” Natasha asks, standing her ground as Steve advances on her. “Half the people we love are dead-” 

“ _All the people_ ” Steve screams. 

“Whatever, Steve,” Natasha scoffs. “All the people, then. But who fucking cares? It doesn’t change what we have to do. We weren’t doing it for them anyway, were we?”

“What have we got left to lose?” Thor murmurs, repeating his words from earlier. “We don’t have anything to hang onto left,” he says more loudly. “So we don’t have anything that can be taken from us.”

“Come on, Captain,” Natasha takes Steve’s arm, pulling him int he direction of the city. “Get yourself together. We can mourn for years to come. Right now, we have to do what we can to make this right. We’ve got a world of hurt to dish out, and we need a plan to find the bastard we’re gonna hurt.”

Steve squeezes his eyes closed. There are tense lines around his mouth, and furrows in his brown, but slowly they smooth away. When he reopens his eyes, his face seems graven of stone. Thor nods. 

“Let’s go,” he tells them all, and grabs Bruce, lifting him off in the air, flying in the direction of the city.

***

When they land on a palace balcony, it’s to find smoke rising from all across the city, and machines blaring warnings deep inside the building. Bruce staggers inside, shaking himself as though trying to shake off pain and sadness. It doesn’t seem to work, and a green flush grows across the back of his neck. 

“Not now,” Thor mutters, grabbing Bruce around the shoulders. “Not now,” he repeats. 

Bruce nods, and they both turn back to the railing to wait for Natasha and Steve, and whoever else is still alive out there. For long instants they stand in silence, side by side, staring out. Then Bruce sets a hand on Thor’s arm. 

“Loki?” he asks.

“Dead. I guess. I…” Thor swallows. “I don’t even know now. I’m alive. I should have died, holding his body as our ship broke apart around us. I should have died with him.”

“No,” Bruce murmurs. “He tried to save you. I saw that much, or rather, the Hulk did. He didn’t want you to die?”

“No? Would it not be better for us to sit together forever in Valhalla than for me to be here, all alone, with my heart in lost in empty space beside him?” Thor’s voice breaks on the words, and he can’t look at Bruce. 

“I don’t know,” Bruce admits, squeezing Thor’s arm. “I don’t know what happens after you die, but I suppose you’d understand that better than I would. But it doesn’t really matter what would be better. It would have been better for me never to have become the Hulk. It would have been better for you to be on Asgard, and your people alive. But it doesn’t matter.”

“When did you grow so wise?” Thor whispers.

“It’s all Brunhilde,” Bruce laughs. Then he stops, his fingers digging into Thor’s arm like a vise. “What-what happened to her? The Hulk… I didn’t see.”

“Oh, Bruce,” Thor turns to him completely, folding his arms around the smaller man’s shoulders and pulling Bruce against his chest. “I… I have not the words nor the heart to tell you now.”

In his arms, Bruce trembles. His face is pressed against Thor’s breastplate, but even so Thor can tell when it changes, broadening and lengthening. 

“Little girl?” the Hulk calls out, his growling voice plaintive. 

“I’m so sorry,” Thor murmurs, still holding Bruce against him, even as he feels the man twitch and shiver. Then Bruce shakes himself, and when he pulls away, there is no trace of the Hulk in his face. 

“She deserved more than that,” he says flatly. 

“Yes. Yes, she did,” Thor nods. 

“We all deserved more,” Steve’s voice comes to them from open doorway out onto the balcony. “And it’s not over. I don’t know how, or when, but we’re going to get what we deserve.”

“Captain,” Thor turns away from Bruce, nodding to him. “You are resolved once again?”

“They say vengeance is a sin,” Steve growls. “Guess I’m going to hell after this, then.”

Thor raises an eyebrow. “Perhaps. Yet I say this to you, Steven, and you, Bruce, and you, Natasha. The sun _will_ shine on us again. Vengeance may be in our future, but that is not all all.”

“How do you know that, Thor?” Natasha asks, folding her hands behind her back and standing with her legs spread wide, as though she were about to receive a briefing. 

“It was foretold to me in Loki’s dying moments,” Thor says flatly. He walks inside the building, and the other three trail after him. “The Norns have not finished their work with us, and they did not set me a fate that would end in ruin and death.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow, then turns away, prowling around the room Thor has found. It is empty of people, and there are no piles of ash to mark where someone once stood. There are a few low chairs scattered about, and Bruce throws himself into one. 

“What do we do now?” He asks. 

“We rest,” Natasha replies at once, turning back to him. “We try to sleep, and in the morning, we make plans. We talk about what we will do, and forget about fate and destiny and hell. We only do, because there is nothing left but action and sleep, nothing left but to complete whatever mission we set ourselves.”

Thor opens his mouth to reply, but then shuts his jaw with a click. These are mere mortals, humans with short lives and even shorter sight. If his reassurances do not bring them comfort, there is nothing he can do. He nods instead. 

“There are sure to be servants left in this palace, somewhere. Let us find them, and find ourselves losing for the night.”

***

The servant Thor finds leads him to a well appointed room, one wall made up of a huge window, and another with a wide bed pushed up against it, covered in furs from some spotted creature. Thor thanks the man, bowing to him, and then takes the bottle of clear liquor the servant hands him. 

When the door closes, he makes his way to the bed, sinking down to sit on its side. The furs covering it are strange to him, but their very presence makes his heart ache. His own bed was blanketed just as this one is, with the pelts of creatures he’d killed defending his people, or hunted for his father’s table. The feel of these ones against his palm as he sets one hand down is familiar and too strange to be contemplated. 

Thor shakes his head. There is blood on one side of his face, and he knows dirt is smeared over his arms, yet now that he is sitting down, he cannot muster the energy to stumble towards the bathing room the servant pointed out to him. 

He lets his ax fall to the ground with a horrible thud, then shakes his head once again. It is the only sound, in the room, but one of the open windows lets cries filter in from the city outside. That will have to be dealt with tomorrow, but it is not in his heart to start thinking of it now, and more so not his duty nor his part to direct this planet’s grief. 

Thor swallows thickly. He reaches down, pushing off his boots without unlacing them completely, groaning when he frees his feet. The bottle of vodka glimmers at him invitingly as he starts to unbuckle his pants, but he does his best to ignore it. There is not enough there to drink himself into a stupor and forget the day, and so there is not enough for anything good to come of drinking. It was a kind gesture on the part of the man who led him here, but Thor cannot drown his grief as easily as all that. 

He slips his trousers down, leaving them in a pile next to his boots, and slides off his underclothes as well. His legs are strangely clean, a bright bruise starting up on one thigh, but nothing else to mark the horrors of the past day. Thor growls at them, pounding his fist into the bruise. Then he yanks off his tunic, delighting in the way his arms, at least, bear the scars of his fights and his losses. 

Naked, he lies back on the bed. There will be dirt on the sheets when he wakes. Thor thinks, a little wildly, of who will wash them. Are there any servants left who work in the laundry? Will he himself stand over a basin, as he has on many a campaign past, and scrub dirt and blood from his garments?

He laughs, just a single guffaw. Then he pulls the sheets out from under himself, and settles them and the furs over his body. They are warm, though Thor hardly needs them in this warm land. He keeps them on top of himself, however, not quite able to muster the will to make himself more comfortable. 

Instead, he lies there, flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling with eyes that see nothing, and a mind that sees too much. Loki’s death plays like a record in his mind, over and over, as it has since the Guardians plucked him out of his death-sleep among the stars. It plays, and plays, and plays, and slowly it shifts into more dream than waking nightmare. 

***

Thor lies there for what seems like hours, drifting in a doze. Around him, the room darkens to pitch, lanes still somehow turning, even with all that has passed since it last rotated on its axis. First it fades to slate and then to pitch, night creeping in to press on Thor’s closed eyelids. He is almost completely asleep when it is finally broken by a flash of green light. 

It shakes Thor awake fully, and at first he wonders if it was simply dreamland slipping through to meet him. Then, though, he hears a faint sound, as though of someone sitting down on the bed next to him, someone with light feet and careful movements. Thor holds his breath for a slow count of three. 

The sounds come again, now those of someone fiddling with fabric or leather, a soft susurrating murmur. Thor opens his eyes. 

It is so dark in the room that he can hardly see the outline of whoever is sitting by him. The only light is that of the pale stars filtering through the wide window, and even they seem dim tonight, shrouded in their own mourning, perhaps. Thor’s eyes slowly adjust. Beside him, an outline resolves, that of a tall man with long hair and a narrow waist. 

Thor does not dare to breathe. 

“Awake, Thor?” 

The whisper hangs in the air over him, yet Thor still refuses to turn on his side to get a better look at who is next to him. He will play no games with ghosts this night, not even ones molded out of his deepest longings. 

“I know you are. You do not lie so still in sleep as all that.”

The voice is one he would never forget, not if he lived ten thousand years from this day and never saw its owner again. Thor bites his lip, then rolls to his side, breaking as fast as he had resolved to resist this new temptation. 

“Why are you here, specter? Why come to haunt me, when you died with honor and should be drinking your fill in Valhalla?”

“Would I truly deserve that?” Loki’s voice whispers to him, the figure shifting on the bed. 

“You sacrificed yourself in a battle for all that is good and right in the universe. If not you, then who?” Thor asks. 

“Would it please you if I had not?”

Thor swallows hard. It takes two tries to get his words to rise out of his throat and spill into the dim air. 

“Yes,” he whispers. Then, stronger, “yes, it would please me. Just this one time it would have delighted me for you to play both sides and betray me for a short while. Just this one time, I would have liked you to be predictable.”

“Better that I live a monster, than die a hero?” There is laughter in Loki’s shade’s voice. 

“Never a monster. Not to me,” Thor snaps. 

“Never? Not even when I was locked up in Asgard, in a cell, mad with rage and hatred?”

“Not even then, Loki.”

“So you wish I had saved myself? You wish that I had turned on you, and risked having to live without you if Thanos succeeded in killing you?”

“I so wish,” Thor admits. His blush is hot on his cheeks, but as no one can see it, and he speaks to a ghost, it is no matter. 

“Selfish. As always, you are selfish, Thor.” The words are harsh, but Loki chuckles as he says them. 

“Yes. In this, I am,” Thor growls. “I have mourned you enough for one lifetime.”

“Then mourn no longer,” Loki snaps his fingers, and witchlight flares into being above the bed, illuminating everything in an eerie green glow. 

“Why? Because you are here as a specter, just a haunt, and I cannot hold you against my chest, nor count on your aid in my last hour?” Thor slumps back onto his back, his eyes fixed on the light above the bed. 

Loki’s hand cups his cheek. 

It is warm, and heavy, Loki’s fingers threading through the hair at Thor’s temple and his palm settling on Thor’s chin. 

“Does this feel like the hand of a ghost?” he murmurs. “Do I feel as though I am dead and gone to you, Thor?”

Thor trembles. He reaches up to his cheek, his hand hovering over Loki’s for a frozen moment. Then he lays it over top. It does not pass through, as it would an illusion or a shade. Instead, he feels Loki’s delicate fingers twitch on his cheek. 

“L-loki?” He stutters out.

“I’m here, brother.”

“But how?” Thor sits up abruptly, so that he faces Loki where Loki has twisted round on the edge of the bed. “I saw you die.”

“And I believed you next. Yet here we both are. I had just a single spark of life left when Thanos destroyed the ship. I conjured a cradle of ice about myself in those last moments as the ship fell to pieces and you were torn from my body. There I drifted, like a huge gleaming diamond, just barely alive, until I was rescued by a passing freighter. I have been trying to come to Midgard ever since.”

“You… what?” Thor cannot believe this is real. His heart beats in his chest faster than the hammer of the strongest smith, and his hands tremble as he holds them in his lap. 

“I lived, just as you did. I’m here, Thor, for you.”

Thor reaches out one shaking hand. Just as Loki just did, he cups his brother’s cheek, then lets his hand slip around to cradle the back of Loki’s neck. Loki does not move, save for the quickening rise and fall of his chest. Thor takes a moment to explore the curve of Loki’s throat with his fingers, but soon that proves to be far too little. 

“Come here,” he breathes. “I… just come here.”

Loki nods, one single curt gesture of his head, and draws his bare feet up onto the bed. It is that single motion, so casual and calm, that finally breaks Thor. He tugs Loki forward by his neck, and Loki sprawls ungracefully across the bed, falling on top of Thor in a heap. Thor doesn’t mind, though. To the contrary, he wraps his arms tightly around Loki’s waist, pressing their chests together and burying his face in Loki’s hair. Loki squirms against him. 

“No,” he squeezes Loki more tightly. “Not yet, Loki. Not yet.”

“Thor, you oaf. I’m not trying to get away. I’m just trying to get more comfortable.” Loki kicks Thor’s side a little where his feet are still tucked up underneath him. Thor looses his grip just enough for Loki to fix that, and then tightens it back, pressing himself in a long line against Loki’s front.

“You’re… this is real?” he asks in a whisper against Loki’s ear.

Loki doesn’t answer, at least not in words. But he presses himself hard against Thor, fusing their bodies together from head to toe, with only a light sheet and his clothes between them. Thor whimpers. The smell of Loki’s hair fills his nose. 

“Not enough,” he groans as he runs his hands all over Loki’s back. “Need more. Loki, please.”

“Of what?” Loki whispers, his voice trembling. 

“Don’t know,” Thor admits. “Just, more. More of you. More of this.”

Loki waves his hand, and suddenly, Thor’s hands are against bare skin.

“Is this ok?” He asks. 

“Yes,” Thor sighs delightedly. He squeezes Loki’s waist, feeling how it’s real and solid in between his palms. “Still not enough, though,” he admits. Then he kicks the sheet from between them. 

They are naked, both of them. This is not something Thor has ever felt before, his body pressing against his brother’s and Loki clinging to him in return, but even so it feels like the most natural thing in the world. Absently, he wonders why they have never laid together like this before, but it is a fleeting thought, overtaken by how Loki’s hands have started to trace across his abs, and how Loki is nuzzling against his shoulder. 

“I thought you dead as well,” Loki says in a tiny voice. “I did not expect to bear it so poorly.”

A tear threatens to leak out of Thor’s one good eye, but he blinks it away, choosing instead to press his face more deeply into Loki’s hair. 

“It hurts too much,” he admits. “I cannot feel that again.”

“Then I guess I’ll just have to avoid dying.”

“Don’t you dare. Not ever again, not before me.” Thor growls. He pulls Loki away from where he nuzzles Thor’s throat by the hair, looking him in the eye. “I cannot lose you again.”

“I won’t let you,” Loki promises. “I won’t.”

Thor stares more deeply into Loki’s face, but if there is a lie hidden there somewhere, he cannot find it. His eyes catch and hold on Loki’s pink mouth during their search, as though their set might tell Thor whether or not Loki truly understands. 

It doesn’t. Just the same, Thor can’t tear his gaze away. Instead, he leans in, and then, madly, suddenly, he presses his own to them. 

Loki gasps, but Thor does not pull away. Loki’s lips are soft underneath his, a sharp contrast to the way one of Loki’s hipbones is digging into the lowest part of Thor’s belly. Thor presses his own harder against Loki’s, turning a tentative brush into a true kiss. At first, Loki doesn’t move against him. Then, though, he kisses back.

His hands fly all over Thor, plucking and rubbing at every inch of Thor’s skin, and his mouth works against Thor’s desperately. Thor, too, feels frantic. His brother tastes like day old fear and ash, and ice, and it is the most beautiful taste he has ever tried. He moans, sliding his tongue inside Loki’s mouth to lick against his teeth. 

Loki’s hand trail over his side and back, coming to rest on Thor’s ass. He pulls Thor even closer, and Thor goes willingly enough. Their hips slot together. Thor isn’t completely hard - not yet, he thinks as he rocks against Loki - but that doesn’t matter. Loki’s whole body is comfort and home and safety. 

“Thor,” Loki groans, pulling away just enough to speak. “Thor, what are you doing?”

Thor growls low in his throat, yearning for Loki’s lips to be on his again. He looks Loki in the eye though, gathering himself. 

“Kissing you. Loving you. Doing what I should have done centuries ago. Is that alright?”

Loki nods slowly. “I have wanted this for an age,” he murmurs. 

“What?”

“You, me, together. Your hands all over me, your mouth worshipping mine,” Loki clarifies. 

“And now I’m never going to let go,” Thor swears. He presses his thigh between Loki’s, kissing his throat quickly. “I’m never going to give you up now, Loki. Not ever.”

“Good,” Loki sighs. Then he kisses Thor’s forehead with soft lips that do not bite or burn, as they are want to do. “Good, for I would not let you leave me, not after this.”

“I will fight the whole of every legion of every tyrant and every hero in the galaxy to stop them from parting us,” Thor says. “That I do swear. Loki…” his voice dissolves into a moan as Loki strokes his hair. 

“There will be time for more talk, and more declarations of… love… tomorrow,” Loki sighs. “For now, Thor, know that I, too, will fight for you and love you till the end of time. For now, let us sleep.”

Thor kisses Loki’s throat again, then cuddles Loki close on his chest, trying to control his breathing. When he finally manages to settle himself enough not to scream more words of need and love when he opens his mouth, he heaves a deep sigh. 

“As always, you are right. For now, we sleep, you with me, just as we will sleep from now own. For now, know that I love you.”

“And-” Loki cuts himself off, his throat bobbing against Thor as he swallows hard. “And I you, Thor.”

**Author's Note:**

> \+ Want a different take on an IW fix it fic? Read my long fic, [Retcon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14354049/chapters/33131901), here! It's a thorki time travel au following from IW. 
> 
> +Come say hi on tumblr at [saltandlimes](http://saltandlimes.tumblr.com/)


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